Pondering about P.C Theophilus Goon

[pete9012S]

I found myself pondering about Mr. Goon today.



As we know, he played a very prominent role in the Find Outers books.
Take him away and the Find Outers would lose an enemy, a protagonist and someone to constantly stay one step ahead of and get the better of..



I had a few questions that maybe some here could throw their opinions on:

How old do you feel Mr Goon is in the books? Old? Youngish? Middle aged?

Why did Mr Goon never marry?

He seems to enjoy the company of various cooks around the village, popping in for tea and cakes on his rounds.



What friends did he have in the village? Did he go for a pint? Any pubs mentioned in the books?

What did he do at Christmas? Was he all alone?

What relatives did he have? I think some are mentioned in a book or two..

Did he deserve promotion? Would he have solved ANY of the cases The Find Outers solved using his own brains?



Jenks did not seem to have a high opinion of Goon - Why? What made Jenks look down on P.C. Goon so much?

Later life and retirement. Would he live out his days in Peterswood and eventually retire?

Where would he live - his house seemed to come with the job?

Did he ever drive a car? He seems glued to his bike - except when he falls off- in the books?

[Barnard]

I’ve always thought that Goon was about 40 years old. As Ern’s surname is Goon he must have had at least one brother who was Ern’s father.

[Bertie]

Yes. I've always thought of Goon as being in his 40's - and, as Barnard says, Ern's father must be Goon's brother and I've always thought of all the children's parents as being around their 30's and 40's as well.

He definitely attends the local pub. In Spiteful Letters, Fatty guesses that's where he'd be as there was a Darts competition there, and Goon had come second.

As regards would Goon have solved any of the cases but for the Find-Outers? There's a few he didn't even know there was anything to be solved - Secret Room, Hidden House, Banshee Towers, Strange Messages (once he'd turned the old people out). And plenty where he was very much on the wrong track completely, even befriending the culprit - Burnt Cottage, Disappearing Cat, Pantomime Cat, Invisible Thief...

Even when the children help him, like in Vanished Prince, he made a mess of it. I'd say the only two where he comes close to solving it with decent detective work are Spiteful Letters and Missing Necklace. The first he works out about the Sheepsale link, finds out about Mrs Moon's connection to the receivers of the notes, and even confronts her about it. It's only after that that he messes it all up.

And Missing Necklace, he (somehow!) has found out to watch the old man on the bench as the gang pass him notes in cigarettes, and he managed to work out the code. So without the Find-Outers he'd have still probably been in the Waxwork Hall to hear the plans - but then his sneeze would have given him away, not Fatty, so he'd have been in for a hard time and wouldn't have been there to catch most of the gang later that night. So the Find-Outers unintentionally help him there.

[pete9012S]

Great responses Barnard and Bertie, many thanks!

[Bertie]

As regards Jenks' relationship with Goon. I can understand why he didn't rate him highly or like him very much - he's bad tempered with very poor people skills, little to no empathy, and is quick to pooh-pooh anything that doesn't fit his immediate and limited view of what happened.

What's more puzzling is why he keeps him on and why he doesn't always give him all the details needed to help him - such as Tupping's past in Disappearing Cat, and I think he says something in a later book (maybe Tally Ho Cottage or Missing Man?) about 'I haven't told that to Goon, you know he's such a blunderer' or words to that effect.

That's strange, to handicap your constable like that. If he clearly doesn't trust him enough, he should replace him. Though the books would lose a lot of humour if they took out Goon, and his enraged reactions to Fatty's antics.

[Boodi 2]

I always thought that PC Goon was an older man (at least 50 years old), but that is probably due to the fact that when I first read the books as a child I considered that everyone over the age of 30 was "ancient"!!! Apart from Ern's family, relatives (the Woosh family) are mentioned in the "Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage", as Ern stays with them and Mrs. Woosh is very proud of the fact that they are related to the village bobby and much to Ern's dismay even suggests inviting him to tea! Knowing Goon he would probably prefer to spend Christmas alone in Peterswood just in case a crime was committed. At times he has the right idea, but is always far behind the FFOs and apart from his often cruel and inappropriate behaviour he makes so many blunders that I'm amazed he has not been dismissed from the force. He is probably single because no self-respecting woman would have any interest in him and when he retires I expect that he would live in a cheap B&B somewhere and spend his days cursing his luck and blaming that "fat toad" for his lack of promotion!!!

[Bertie]

...He is probably single because no self-respecting woman would have any interest in him and when he retires I expect that he would live in a cheap B&B somewhere and spend his days cursing his luck and blaming that "fat toad" for his lack of promotion!!!

I did think that, as Pete pointed out, he'll probably end up marrying one of the cooks that he either employs or encounters on his rounds.

Even if he did, I don't think it would change his personality much and I think he definitely would spend his days embittered about his lack of progress in the police and blaming Fatty and his superiors for that.

[Barnard]

Perhaps, like George Dixon, in Dixon of Dock Green, he might become a sergeant by the age of 75.

[pete9012S]

Super observations - many thanks!

In the fifth book - Missing Necklace, Goon is on a high:

“All I know about you is that you’re a conceited, interfering kid what ought to be put in
his place and kept there—you and your nasty barking dog! This here case is mine, and I’m
already getting on with it, and what’s more I’ll get Promotion over this as sure as my name is
Theophilus Goon,” said the policeman, marching up the steps to the police-station. “You
clear-orf now!”
“What a blow!” muttered poor, disappointed Fatty, as Goon disappeared through the door.
He and the others walked home slowly, discussing all that Clear-Orf had said.
“To think of that fat policeman at work on a perfectly gorgeous new mystery that we don’t
know a thing about!” said Fatty, looking so miserable that Bets put her arm through his. “It’s
maddening. And the worst of it is that I simply don’t see how we are going to find out a thing,
if Goon won’t tell us.”

In 1954's Tally Ho Cottage, Goon rants about his promotion:

Goon mimicked the Chief’s voice, and felt very pleased with his
imitation. ‘Ho, Chief!’ he said. ‘Ho! Glasses I need, do I? Let me tell you
this—I don’t need glasses, and I don’t need advice from you—all I want is a
spot of promotion, which is more than due to me. . . .’

In Banshee Towers almost twenty years after the first book we find:

Sure enough, there was Mr. Goon, standing at the cross-roads, directing the busy traffic
with a frown. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Ern cycling along with Fatty! “Stop!”
he bawled. “Ern! You heard me!”
But alas, Ern disobeyed the Law, and pedalled faster than ever, leaving poor Mr. Goon
very angry indeed!

So, Goon, now stuck on traffic, aged ???.
Putting a policeman on traffic is often seen as a demotion in many tv police dramas. For Goon, it's his normal duty.
Also, Peterswood must have gotten a lot more built up from Burnt Cottage to have busy traffic in this last book..

Later in the book when they uncover something important, Fatty says:

“What do we do when we get back?” shouted Ern. “I hope you won’t go and report
everything to my Uncle Goon. I wouldn’t like that. You know I’m in trouble with him!”
“Don’t worry, Ern. We hold all the winning cards now,” shouted back Fatty, comfortably.
“I rather think we ought to go over Goon’s head, and get in touch with Chief Inspector Jenks.
We know him quite well enough. This is a bit too big a thing for a village policeman to
handle.”

So, even the schoolboy Fatty does not rate P.C. Goon as an operational, fully functioning policeman!

And so to the end of the very last book. We see Jenks as usual coming to the aid of the Find-Outers and getting Goon off their back:

I shall cross out that complaint in my books,” said Inspector Jenks, with a
very broad smile indeed. “And you needn’t worry about Mr. Goon. I am going straight up to
the police station to tell him of the unexpected—and really astonishing—help you have given
me this morning. I must say that I think the Five Find-Outers are remarkably good
detectives!”

No praise for Goon.
We leave him after eighteen years of being in The Find-Outers books finishing just as he started, a frustrated, underachieving, promotion hungry, hapless village Bobby!!

[Hannah]

I'm wondering how common promotions were for PCs back then? Was it normal to be promoted after some time or was is more the usual way that you would stay at the rank of a PC your whole working life?

[Debbie]

The impression I always had of PC Goon was that he was really at the stage where if he was going to be promoted out of being a village bobby, then he would have been. He obviously wasn't so bad they wanted to remove him, but he'd never done enough to merit at promotion either. I think I'd put him as 40s/50s. So set in his ways and frustrated that he hadn't been promoted, but knowing it was less and less likely.

Perhaps a bit like someone remaining a curate and never becoming vicar. I think there's one mentioned in one of the Monica Edwards books, maybe Operation Seagull? And Tamsin (obviously as daughter of a vicar will know it all!) is asked why, and she suggests that maybe he's just too dreamy and lost in his own world to take charge of a parish. (my memory of that book is fairly vague, so someone might correct me).

[Yak]

In one of the books PC Pippin is described as being half Goon's age. I would imagine he would have been early twenties so Goon was probably in his late forties. Maybe he never found a woman who he thought was 'worthy' of him .. I can't somehow seeing him marrying a cook because he considers himself to be 'better' than that, yet I can't imagine someone like Mrs Trotteville or similar ever looking twice at him!

[Yak]

On a tangent, was Jenks married? I had the impression that he wasn't. Why would that be? He would have been quite a catch.

[Hannah]

I don't remember any family (in the sense of wife/own children) of Jenks ever being mentioned. But of course he could have been married and it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't important to the story.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Some good observations here and I agree that Goon is likely to be mid 40s.

Peterswood is rural England in post-war Britain. There is no knife crime, drugs or farm equipment stolen. Let alone the theft of a whole flock of sheep, as often happens here in Dorset!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-47951345


The more I here about the failings of our current police, the more respect I have for Goon. He wants to be a good copper; he doesn't like to see the Law flouted and he wants to see wrong-doers apprehended. Sadly, his own personal failings let him down!

https://www.nfuonline.com/updates-and-i ... port-2022/